Transcript
Happy Thursday. We're here again for another great show, and we're going to do an all demo show. Rick's going to take the reins on the demo today. Rick, what are we going to demo for our audience? Yeah. Hey, Kirsten. Good afternoon. You and I both are tuning in from Central Ohio. We got one of our producers, Jeffrey, coming at you live from the Barncade in Central Ohio and Felicia from the DFW Texas Multiplex. Let us know where you are tuning in from. We already have someone in from Jaipur and Toronto. Hey, Chris, how's that book doing? We're going to demo the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance. The last time, Kirsten, we were up, we did the Veeam Software Appliance. I've got a little bit of a different angle here today. Let's first start with a definition before I click anything. The Veeam Infrastructure Appliance is a natural supplement to the Veeam Software Appliance, especially if you want to scale an infrastructure from different roles like proxies or repositories. I think that leads to one of our first engagement techniques for the show here today. Let me zoom it in right there, Kirsten. I think we want to ask the audience. We got some folks rolling in, coming in. Wow, we got people from all over. But what's our first question for the audience here today? Yeah. The Veeam Infrastructure Appliance can have a couple of different roles within the backup environment. It can either be a proxy, it could be a repository, it could be a hardened repository. We want to know what you guys want to see. Do you want to see it deployed as a proxy? Do you want to see it deployed as a repository? Why don't you go ahead and submit your vote in the chat? Yeah. I've got Felicia looking at the chat, and I'll just type the question on top of the screen share here. Do you want us to install a proxy or repository? We're prepared for either. We got folks coming in from all over. Welcome from Atlanta, Tunisia, Thailand. Awesome. Great, everyone. We're going to pose out to the group the question and just hit it in the chat, and Felicia will roll up those results. But I want to highlight something new for those of you out here. New is the ability to have iSCSI storage and NVMe storage support for roles like proxies and repositories, which is really interesting. That was a feature request, by the way. That is new since 13.02 just went out actually last night. I've actually never done this before on this particular version because it just came out. But let us know if you want to see a proxy or a repository built in. We're live on several channels here, so we'll pick up some of the results. While I'm doing that, I also want to highlight that the proxy is probably one that I like better, but I've done a lot more work with a repository. We've got somebody saying, do both. That's not an option, Steven, so that's a nice one. But hello to Christian joining us from Quito. I will see you at the Veeamon tour there. I think it's on 8th September, I think, something like that. Welcome, Christian. I think what I'm going to do, I'm going to have you pick, Kirsten, because we got split on the votes here. Kirsten, which one do you want to do, a proxy or repository? What's great is that all of these roles are pre-configured, pre-hardened, and secure. I think for me, what I'm the most interested in is the hardened repository, because I know that's important to our customers. They need to make sure that their backups are safe and secure. I think that could be a really good way to show how to deploy this, add it to the Veeam backup server, and get started with those immutable backups, those immutable backup copies. Let's go with that. But I think though, as we go through here, Rick, and you might agree, the setup is probably similar. In both ways through the wizard, I mean. The wizard is going to look similar when you start deploying. It does. It's familiar, especially if you've done some of the different Veeam software appliance type installs before, but the Veeam infrastructure appliance. I really love this option here. Fresh install will wipe everything, including any backups on disk. But this option down here, the one before will upgrade or this one, if you have potentially a prior Veeam hardened repository config, it'll keep the data, but then redo the OS. This is actually really smart. Now, this is a blank system, so I'm going to do the top option. While I do that, I want to jump into some of the questions. A really good engagement already, friends. This is awesome. I'm going to go to Trylock's question here. While this goes, Trylock, you're in my head. I already have the tab open to what you're looking for. We'll let this go. This is going to take a few moments here. But to Trylock's question, he is asking, in a real-world scenario, how does the Veeam infrastructure appliance handle scalability and performance moving from test to production? First of all, I want to draw everyone's attention to community.veeam.com. This is our web property specifically for the practitioners, so the community hub. In there, if you click on community, there is the security blueprints section, which is where I'm at right here, and it's this very last one way down there. I know it's small and hard to find. But in there, Trylock, there's all kinds of designs that are field-validated from our architects around the world and the product management team. Let me check back on my process here. I got a question. I'm going to come back to your question, Trylock. This is going to mess up everything on this system. I know, I'm going to say yes, and we're underway. The Veeam hardened repository, 130229 on Rocky Linux, our Veeam pre-hardened configured environment. This is going to take about 12 minutes. I'm going to come back to this one in a bit, but I'm going to go back to Trylock here. I picked one of these up already, Trylock. Here's a design from Joe Gramilian. He's one of our architects in North America. NAS backup to the Veeam software appliance, five petabytes. That's big. This read is pretty good, but what I want to highlight, Trylock, is that there's a design here. What does it look like in production? Well, here is that Veeam software appliance for Veeam backup and replication. Then over here, and this is a PDF that's part of the download. But then over here, here's Veeam infrastructure appliance in a sober scale-up backup repository. Here's a diagram to your question, Trylock. Literally, it's right here ready to go. But what I want to highlight is, this is just one example. I think there's over 200 of them now. It gives them two billion files and 50 shares. Now, that might be a little bit big for what you're asking for, but I think it's really important to prove that these large configurations are ready to go. Then on top of that, here's some constraints. Eight-hour backup window, 30 days retention, immutable, that's a good idea, 2026, yo. It's one of those things that 90 percent data reduction, data reduction is assumed to be 90 percent of the source data. Small amount of data reduction, change rate of three percent, one share per 100 terabytes. Some assumptions are outlined here. Then you can talk about some of the different sizing. Trylock, I feel like so much of what you're asking for is right here. There's so many different designs. Honestly, Joe and his colleagues have more, so feel free to go in and ask Joe a question and, hey, do you have one that's like this, like that? If there is a routine deployment that we have that he could point you to, great. If not, he can size it up and validate it with the product management team. Then here's some other configuration things that are highlighted. I'm going to go a little bit off script. I'm going to ask Felicia, if she can, can you push this link out to the folks here? Because folks are asking for it, I think it's pretty good. This is the library of these blueprints. Again, here's the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, which is the topic of the day, which let's check in on it. How's it doing? Still going. But yeah, Kirsten, do we have any questions here that we can pick up as we answer Trilock's question? Yeah, I would say he's been asking a lot of questions, but one of the ones that I liked was, what's one common mistake people make while deploying the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance for the first time? Would it be like not checking the system requirements, not sizing it correctly? What do you think, Rick? Very good question. I'll see if I can ask the tech support team that question maybe for a subsequent show. But what I would say would be a good common misconfiguration is treating it like the Veeam Software Appliance. The Veeam Infrastructure Appliance has slightly different system requirements here. I've zoomed in on it, eight gig of RAM, I believe, which is less, and smaller disk requirements for the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance. Right off the bat, this is a smaller amount of infrastructure and capacity needed to run a role like proxy or repository. I'd say one common mistake is to maybe just treat it like a Veeam Software Appliance, which is the last show we did, but just so everyone else knows the big difference. I'll actually go back to Joe's picture up at the top here because it actually does a really good job of it. The difference between a Veeam Software Appliance and a Veeam Infrastructure Appliance is that the software appliance is running like Veeam Backup and Replication or Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager. The Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, and I'll make this, let's see, let's make it red here. Here's an example, proxies. Those are data movers. Those are doing work on behalf of the Veeam Software Appliance, like Veeam Backup and Replication, for example. The muscle is in the red, where you'd probably want more processor, but you don't need as much disk space. Then let's get a new color. Let's go with orange. Then over here, we have Veeam hardened repositories functioning as backup targets. Those would be Veeam Infrastructure Appliances. I would say that the sizing of those different components would be one of the top mistakes. Then I'm going to put my Internet to the test here. Let's see here. If I go to Google and I just say Veeam Calculator, I think we'll be able to get, yeah, it is calculator.veeam.com. I didn't even need Google for that. I highly recommend you go if you're thinking about, well, how big do I need to make it? Do some cycles here where you put in some information about your environment, like how to size the proxy and repository when something like this doesn't cover it. For example, here's an example that has Veeam Infrastructure Appliance and Veeam Software Appliance. If I go down to the sizing here, this is pretty interesting. There's 16 gig of RAM and four cores on this Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, which is above the system requirements, but this is doing that five petabytes of NAS data. That's why. You want to take this as a base and then the system requirements as a starter. I've done this as a starter. I hope that answers the question, Kirsten. Anything else come in through the question? Yeah. With the Veeam Software Appliance, there's centralized patching and updates. Does that extend to the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance as well? Did somebody see my run of show? My goodness. I literally have this prepared as well. If I look right here, I got an e-mail to my personal e-mail last night. This is an e-mail because, and let's also sequence this in. Last night was Wednesday the 26th, and this is my personal home environment. If we were doing the show yesterday, this would have been the GA. But since yesterday, we dropped the update. I have at my crib, I've got a Veeam Software Appliance, and then I have Tracero, which is the Veeam hardened repository. Both of those are due for some updates. I got an e-mail last night at home telling me the same thing. Now, the wonderful thing about the Veeam Software Appliance is that updates are mandatory. Same goes for the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance. That being said, I think it said they will be applied by May 31 if I don't do anything. My home environment will go to, let's see here, it would be 13.0.2.29. If I was doing the show next week, the home environment would be up to that. That actually is good because it matches what we have. Got a lot of screens here. I apologize for being shifty. If I go to my actual Veeam Software Appliance, which is what I'm going to connect the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance to, you'll see that this one is already at 13.0.2.29. Right now today, live on the 28th of May, that is the GA and this is the Veeam Software Appliance that I'm going to connect the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance to. I hope that answers that question. We're getting close to the reboot, but what's coming next on the question? That's pretty fast. I guess the other question that comes in is from Christian. He basically asks if this can act as a proxy for Hyper-V environments. Is there any limitations when it comes to different environment types? Is it only compatible with one environment and not another? I don't know what's going on on the Internet today, but the world is in my head. Friends, this is my Hyper-V cluster that I'm running in on. I'm all Hyper-V. If you think about different labs, we have a lot of hypervisors. We have VMware, we have Proxmox, we have Nutanix here in our lab, and we have scale and all these other ones. I am actually doing this Veeam Infrastructure Appliance on Hyper-V. At home, I have also deployed the two that I showed you in e-mail. That's all Hyper-V as well, VHR, Tracero, and the Veeam Software Appliance. Now, one thing I'll say is I'm using the ISO here. Currently, we have to use the ISO instead of an OVA or a native Hyper-V deployment, so we have to do things like set the processor, the memory, the secure boot, all those things. Which is a good segue to my next thing that I want to highlight, is where do you get the Veeam Software Appliance? Hopefully, for those of you who are customers, you've seen my account. This is where you go download product licenses or subscribe to some of the as-a-service offerings. The Veeam Software Appliance is right here. That's where you get, let's just say, the larger ISO that has Veeam Backup and Replication or Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager. But for the good, you got to scroll down just a little bit. I think it's two or three rows down. Here it is. I want to bring your attention to the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance. Now, the good news is, first of all, it's a lot smaller. That's one of the reasons why the requirements are less, because it's, first of all, smaller. You'll see it's updated to 0.2.229. It's an additional download because it's a way to extend the environment here. Let's see if I can show you something of interest here. If I go back a little bit. So what I've actually done is mount this ISO here. This Veeam Infrastructure Appliance 1302, that's what's doing the install on the one that we launched. You'll see it's 1.8. But the actual Veeam Software Appliance, I mean, it's 12 gig. So it's just from an efficiency standpoint. You don't want to unnecessarily use the wrong one. Well, for one, it'll install Veeam Backup and Replication or Enterprise Manager. So it's nice to be efficient like that. So let's check in on it. We got a reboot. All right, Kirsten, we got time for one more question before I get serious now. Who's got a question next? Yes. So Turlock is coming in with a lot of questions. I think he's trying to implement the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance. You know what I mean? But he's basically asking, how does this appliance behave under high workload scenarios? And what are some architectural trade-offs that you might have when using this? Well, I would say that Veeam is proven at scale. And the best way to see that is those security blueprints that, thank you, Felicia, for pushing that link out over at community.veeam.com. So Veeam is proven at scale. And I think that when we share those documents super transparently, I think that's our answer, right? Yeah. I'd also go one step further. Little things like storage integrations and high-performance storage can make the experience really good. Yeah. So we were talking about this earlier, right? Like, we can use the VIA. We can add it to the Veeam Backup and Replication Console server, right? Can we have multiple infrastructure appliances added to the same VBR? Yes. In fact, Joe's design has that with multiple proxy VIAs and multiple repository VIAs. Speaking of which, I'm going to give it a name, VIA 1.3. So I've given this system a name. I'll walk you – we'll go back to questions in just a second. Let's give this system a name here. I'm in a lab, and to the other question, I am going to take Hyper-V. Or I am using Hyper-V, so I'm going to keep that. I do have a little – you know, every environment has their little nuance, right? My little nuance is time. So my environment has to align its time service to the local domain controller, right? So in this particular infrastructure, I'm going to have the authoritative time source be my Active Directory domain controller on this network. And let's – where's my mouse? There it is, okay? And then let's move on to the next step. This is the most important one, host administrator, okay? So if you're going to deploy the Veeam Software Appliance or the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, the most important part is getting these identities right. You know, if we talk about identity resiliency, the – both Veeam Software Appliance and the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, they have a – they have two identities built in. And by the way, one can kind of reset the other, the security officer. So let's get the – hopefully the time works. I think I didn't type that in right. Let me edit that. This is live. Let's see here. dc01.vps.veeam.local. Let's see here. dc01.vps.veeam.local. Got to have time right for mutability, so. Yeah, that's for sure. That's the worst when your time is messed up, right? Yeah, that's for sure. I think I had that right. I'll check something else really quick. Well, I don't want to be stuck on the time. Yeah, dc01. Sorry, I was checking my other – I mean, I use this lab all the time. I could try the Internet one, but usually the Internet one is – it's not permitted over this network, so I usually go to the – it's going so good, and then I get a little snafu. So give me a second here. What other question do we have? I'm going to fix the time here as we go here, but what other question do we have, Kirsten? So a question that I have, right, is I know I've set up the Veeam software appliance, and we had that DSYS STIG password requirement, but when it comes to security, is there anything else that is required besides the DSYS STIG password? Does it require MFA? Like, what are some of the other aspects of this that we need to make sure that we have set up when deploying this? Yeah, we definitely need MFA, and for the pre-built, pre-configured, pre-hardened environment, we do need a DSYS STIG compliant password, which if I can get this time to go, we will – oh, goodness gracious. Hold on, hold on. I think I see what's going on here. Sorry to keep you waiting. Hey, Jeff, can you go two up just for a second while I sort something out on the background here real quick? Kirsten, tell me what one of the questions are real quick before I sort this out on the side here. Well, another question that I have, right, is so, you know, Veeam – deploying the Veeam infrastructure appliance, can we deploy this on any type of machine? Does it have to be hardware, virtual machine, cloud? Is it flexible? Can it be deployed anywhere? I wouldn't say anywhere, but it's very versatile, and we actually publish those requirements pretty openly, and one of the things I would highlight is that we have Veeam-ready qualified systems, right, and from there, we're able to specifically say, hey, if I fancy HPE, if I fancy Dell, if I fancy Lenovo, I can have a configuration that will allow me to go with a configuration I like. So, yeah, we're very flexible, yet the Veeam-ready program will allow us to specifically have the specific configuration we want. One question here just came in from Rudy. Can I have external LAN? Yes, absolutely. That's one of the kind of the newer focused things. One thing I'd say, by the way, is that, you know, the most secure configuration would be directly from the, it would be directly from direct-attached storage, right, so the moment you, like, and I'm doing it in a virtual machine, so it's a little tricky. Actually, I found out what's going on here. It's just that I am, I found out I don't have an IPv4 address. That's what's going on here. So, give me a second. I'll go back into the demo. You know, I do these live. I don't know why I do this, Kirsten. I keep wanting to do this. Well, it keeps the audience engaged. I mean, we had a comment earlier. I was looking at the post in LinkedIn, and it was saying, you know, live demos are the best because you can see how things work, and you can use this to get it set up in your environment. So, like in any environment, I know I've set up multiple things. You know, we ran into little hiccups here and there, so I know Randy Lee's chiming in. He's saying, howdy, y'all. So, hey, Randy, thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thank you, Randy. I think what's going on here is that we are out of IP addresses. That's what's going on, and so that is my challenge. So, I apologize for this snafu. Trust me, it worked last night. I did this just last night, and it worked just fine. So, that is our challenge, unfortunately, but one of the things that happens after we continue this process is that we'll have to set the password, and this is actually one of the most important parts. I'll show you kind of a version of this, and I use the Offly app, you know, for that one-time password. So, we'll get, like, and actually, it's getting ready to change here in a minute, but the thought here is that we get these one-time passwords where, you know, here it is. Now, it's a different one, 941. You get these different passwords that will allow the, not just a state-compliant password, but then a one-time password as a multi-factor built in, and that's part of this. So, I apologize that this didn't go as expected, but it is related to being, I think my pool is exhausted. So, I think that's what happened because I did get IPv6, and I did not get IPv4. So, this one didn't go as correctly as planned, and so I'm sorry for that, but Kirsten, you know, I think happens to the best of us. Yeah, it does, and I think one of the cool things that with Veeam, with the latest version that we released, the Veeam Software Appliance, the Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, it's really, you know, to help people maintain that security, but also easy deployment, right? It's, you know, pre-built and pre-configured for you to just deploy as an ISO file, right? So, it's really interesting to see how this is developed further within Veeam, and I would love to hear from you guys, too, in the audience. If you guys, you know, deploy it as a hardened repository or if you're using it as a proxy, feel free to comment below or even take it to the community, community.veeam.com, and walk us through how you may be deployed it as a proxy, how you're using it, so other customers can see how you're using it and can implement it to make sure that their backup environment is more efficient and secure. So, some really cool stuff. I guess we have another question that came in from Kirsten, too, since we're here. Can the VSA repository be expanded after deployment? Generally, yes. I would recommend also testing that in a way so that you know going into it that this is what we want to do. That was by far one of the top requests on the earlier one, so I believe so. I would check the documentation for that real quick. So, I apologize for the, you know, the snafu here, friends, but you know what? Sometimes it happens to the best of us, and I'm sitting here trying to fix it. I'm going crazy. I'm trying to change things all on the back end, but, you know, I think I'm going to leave it right there, and I'm going to have to take it to the YouTube on my own to kind of, like, finish the story, but I think we'll just leave it right there. Oh, one more question here. At least the questions are coming in from Sikone. Sorry if I said that wrong. Does it support integration with Nutanix and Kubernetes? So, Nutanix, yes. Kubernetes, I don't know if the Veeam Software Appliance has the full support for Kubernetes yet actually at this point, so I'd have to get back to you on that. So, I think we'll just leave it right there. So, Kirsten, thank you so much for joining me here on today's TechBytes. Yeah, thank you, Rick. Thanks for taking the reins and, you know, doing the demo. Hopefully next time we can have it go a little smoothly for us, but the demo gods were not in our favor today, but I sure learned a lot just by seeing you get it started. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Well, thank you, everyone, and especially Felicia from Dallas and Jeffrey live from the Barncade. Thanks for watching this episode of TechBytes. We'll see you next time.
